FEATURE
HIPSTERS AND BIKES
P38
He laughs, "It's like a time-travel-
ling bike."
We ask Nick, who spent
months sourcing mods from the
likes of Norman Hyde in the UK,
why he has gone to so much
trouble on British bikes. He looks
a little wistful, leans forward and
tells me almost conspiratorially, "I
grew up watching Elvis Presley,
James Dean and Marlon Bran-
don. They were my heroes and
they rode Brit Bikes, so what else
was I ever gonna ride?"
Others take a more hardcore
stance. Chance, in his mid-20s
and one part of the band "Jesus
Sons" who are booked to play on
the outdoor stage, dresses like
an explosion in a dressing room
shared by The Ramones & early
Aerosmith and has tried his best
to keep his Honda Dream to origi-
nal parts ("It's almost impossible.
Especially the rubber.") He tells
me that not only is he fundamen-
talist about his bike, that deter-
mination to stick to the old ways
extends to other areas of his
life. "I re-manufacture old record
players," he says, "Find old ones
and get them working again. You
can't beat that sound."
He laughs at my quizzical look.
"Yeah, I know it sounds crazy.
But you can't beat the build qual-
ity in the old stuff. Look at my
Honda. All of them used to be
built in little shops and were built
"…And if that makes
us hipsters, then I say
being a hipster is no
bad thing."
